Dogasu@ 23:17 JST -- On January 31st, 2000 a
seventeen year old kid uploaded a website called "Dogasu's English -
Japanese Pokemon Page." Eighteen years later it's still here, and
somehow it's still kind of kicking ass? That's right, it's time for the
annual "Dogasu pats himself on the back" write-up, so let's just get to it!

The anniversary write-up also contains my yearly predictions for the
future so be sure to check those out and let me know what you think!

Dogasu@ 22:00 JST -- Even though this is
something that happened months ago I still feel the need to cover it on
this site; the death of voice actress Hiromi Tsuru
(鶴ひろみ).

Ms. Tsuru passed away on November 16th, 2017. She was found unconscious
in her car and rushed to the hospital where she was later pronounced
dead. The talent agency she belonged to, Aoni Production, announced that the
cause of death was aortic
dissection. She was 57 years old.

Most people know Ms. Tsuru as the voice of Bulma from Dragon Ball and the voice of
Dokin-chan in Anpanman. But for us Pocket Monsters fans she's the
voice of the "Female Rocket-Dan Boss" in the first episode of the 1998
radio drama The
Birth
of Mewtwo.

The "Female Rocket-Dan Boss" (who is often referred to by
fans as "Madame Boss") was heavily implied to be the mother of Sakaki,
the current Boss of the organization. Hirotaka Suzuoki
(鈴置洋孝), who played Sakaki in that radio drama (as well as the in the TV
series, movies, etc.) passed away back in 2006. The Female Rocket-Dan
Boss is the person who sends Miyamoto out to the Andes to track down
the mythical pokemon Mew.

A memorial
service was held for Ms. Tsuru on Saturday, January 13th. During
the service Masako Nozawa (野沢雅子), the voice of Son Goku in Dragon Ball, had this to say:

"If you gather the seven Dragon
Balls they're said to be able to grant you any wish, right? But not
this time. I'm sorry."

Dogasu@ 23:20 JST -- The first details came out
about this summer's new movie, Pocket Monsters the Movie 2018
(劇場版ポケットモンスター2018) while I was in the middle of the deadline
hell that was the end of #Kanto2017. So today, let's play a little bit of
catch up, shall we?

We don't know much about the movie but there are a few things we can
pick apart. First, here's the trailer:

The music
at the end is, as many people have pointed out, basically just Lugia's
theme from the second movie Pocket Monsters the
Movie "Revelation Lugia."
Why they're doing a Lugia homage now
when the 20th anniversary of the Lugia movie won't be until next year (Mewtwo Strikes Back is the one
celebrating the big 2-0 in 2018) is beyond me.

The movie is being released on July 13th 2018. Every other Pocket Monsters movie has been
released on a Saturday but this year the movie's coming out on a Friday instead, for some reason. As
far as competition goes, the
Japanese version of Jurassic
World: Fallen Kingdom
is also scheduled to come out July 13th but at the moment that seems to
be its only competition. However, the Japanese release of Solo: A Star Wars Story will hit
Japanese theaters on June 29th and there's a very good chance it'll
still be at the top of the charts when Pocket Monsters The Movie
2018 hits theaters. After all, Star Wars: The Last Jedi is
still the number one movie in Japan,
even today.
The movie is going to be directed by Tetsuo Yajima (矢嶋哲生). Mr. Yajima
was the director for the Pocket
Monsters XY(&Z) TV series and also served as the assistant
director for last year's Pocket Monsters the Movie "I Choose You!".
Mr. Yajima being the director is actually a really big deal because
this is the first time in the history of this franchise that someone other than Kunihiko Yuyama (湯山邦彦)
has directed a Pocket Monsters
movie! Mr. Yuyama has directed literally all 20 of the 20 films that
are currently out so seeing someone else take the director's chair is
an unexpected surprise. Mr. Yuyama will be the Animation Supervisor for
this film.

Over
on Twitter, Mr. Yajima expressed his thoughts about taking over
from Mr. Yuyama:

I'm going to be allowed to be
the director of 2018's Pocket
Monsters movie. I'd like to take the baton passed on to me from
Mr. Yuyama in my hand and help Satoshi, Pikachu, and everyone else on
this journey. What incredible things will happen, and where? Please
look forward to it.

In the end I'm awake now thanks
to my job. That's because I'm going to be allowed to do character
design
work for the Pokemon movie
coming out next year. Even though I'm new to the team I hope we'll all
work hard together.

Animation
for the film will be a collaboration between OLM and WIT STUDIO,
the company most well known for providing the animation for Attack on Titan. No word yet on just how much this studio
will be involved.

I've added a page
for this movie over in the Movies &
Specials Guide. More updates will be made as new information
becomes available.Pocket Monsters the Movie 2018
will be released on Friday, July 13th 2018 in Japan. An international
release has not been announced at this time.

Dogasu@ 23:06 JST -- Now that #Kanto2017 is
over I finally have the time to focus on some of the other parts of the
site I had been wanting to update all this time but couldn't. For my
first real content update of 2018 I went out to the Hamagin Space
Science Center out in Yokohama to go see Pocket Monsters Sun & Moon Planetarium,
an animated special that debuted at the end of September last year, and
wrote up my
impressions of the show. A detailed plot synopsis, stray
observations, and my comments about what it's like to see a Pocket Monsters animated special
inside a planetarium are all included so be sure to check it out!

Information about this special is next to impossible to find online and
so a lot of what I'm posting in my review today is stuff that you
absolutely cannot find anywhere else. Seriously, even Japanese sites
aren't reporting on this thing!

One of my goals for this website is to provide the community with
information it can't get anywhere else and I think this write-up is a
great example of the kind of content I want to continue coming up with.
Hope you enjoy!

Dogasu@ 14:56 JST -- On my site's anniversary
every year I like to make a series of predictions about what I think
will happen the next year and then check back on them at the end to see
how I did. In last year's
site
anniversary write-up I didn't have that many predictions but
let's take a look anyway at the ones I did manage to make.

First, some video game predictions:

I don’t think we’ll
see any new main series games this year. There have been rumors of a Pocket Monsters Star coming out for
the Nintendo Switch and an upscaled version of Sun & Moon would be fairly easy
to do (I mean, this guy was able
to do it, right?) but I still think that's more of a 2018 release
than something we'll see this year.

The Nintendo Switch Pocket Monsters game didn't come
out this year and my prediction of it coming out in 2018 might still
come true. What I didn't
expect was for Game Freak to take the original Sun & Moon, slap about $10
worth of DLC onto it, and then try to market it as a brand new set of
games called Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. Sooooo...half credit?

I do, however, think
we’ll see at least one spin-off game on the Switch. I wanna say Pokemon
Scramble since that seems to be the series Nintendo likes to use
to
launch a new system but it could very well be something else.

Does the Switch port of Pokkén Tournament count?
Other than that, nothing.

Pokémon GO will get
its Jouto update this year but I think that’s going to be it as far as
huge updates go. Trading and/or battling might be implemented this year
but I think Niantic is going to try to charge people for those
features to offset the massive server load those features will
undoubtedly cause. Maybe something like "only available for premium
members!" or some nonsense like that. Fans will be pissed but Niantic
will still make a bajillion dollars from it.

Jouto came out early in the
year and a partial rollout of Houen started in October. Additionally,
Pokemon Gyms were revamped, in-game tracking was finally fixed, Raid
Battles gave us the ability to obtain legendary pokemon, and a weather
update was rolled out. Not too terrible! P2P batting and
trading never came and neither one of seem to be on the horizon anytime
soon so I got that part wrong.

Next up, animation-related predictions:

On April 1st, 2017
the Pocket Monsters TV series will celebrate its
20th anniversary. For the series’ 15th anniversary an HD remaster of
the very first episode aired on the variety show Pokemon Smash, and while I don’t
dare hope that Media Factory will do something as amazing as remaster
the rest of Kanto I do think it’s reasonable to at least expect a DVD
set released in Japan for the
anniversary. Amazingly, Japan has never had a a full, complete release
of the TV series before; all the country's ever gotten in the past are random episodes here and there.
It's about time the series gets a proper release in its home country!

There's still no DVD release of
Kanto in Japan, appallingly enough, though we did finally get a home
release of a new HD master of that first episode package with the I Choose You! Blu-ray release.

The Sun & Moon TV series is a bit
harder to pin down. In the past I
would usually say something like “Satoshi will gets badges XX through
XX” but that kind of prediction doesn’t really apply to this series,
does it? So instead, I will say that in 2017 we’ll see Satoshi
leave the school on Melemele Island and actually start traveling
around the Alola Region. I also expect Gladio, Guzma, and the Aether
Foundation to make significant appearances before the year's up.

Satoshi left Melemele and spent
the summer in the snoozefest that was the Akala Island arc (the string
of Rocket trio absences is what killed it for me) and then when he got
back he jumped into the plot with Hoshigumo and the Ultra Beasts.
Gladio and the Aether Foundation had significant appearances but Guzma
is still nowhere to be seen. In fact, the Skull-Dan as a whole has been
fairly absent all year, with those two grunts last showing up way back
in May.
Hopefully the group will be treated better in 2018.

I won't go so far as
to say that the 20th movie, I Choose You!, is definitely not going to be a retelling of the
first couple of episodes, but I will at least say that I don't think
it's going to be the start of some trilogy. Why in the world would I
think that? Instead, I think whatever they end up doing this year will
be a one-off thing and that next year we'll go right back to showcasing
the legendary of the day.

We still don't really know if Pocket Monsters the Movie 2018 is
going to be a continuation of the story started in 2017's I Choose
You! or if it will be a continuation in the sense that it
too will be a story set in an alternate universe. Still, it looks like
the old formula's been broken and I'm excited to see where the
movies go from here.

CD-wise I think we'll
get the regulars - Alola! and
Pose, the opening
/
ending theme to I Choose You!,
and a release of the movie's background music. I'll also go ahead and
make the prediction that this will be the year we finally see a release
of the background music for Best
Wishes! and XY (&Z).

The CD single for Alola! / Pose came out on April 12th and the I Choose You! soundtrack came
out
on January 26th. The movie's ending theme didn't get its own CD single
release, however, but it did get a
special release on iTunes packaged
with the ending theme to the Jirachi movie (the other movie ending
theme sung by Asuka Hayashi). No background music releases for Best Wishes! or XY (&Z), annoyingly, but we did
get a surprise in the form of that new
Rika Matsumoto CD featuring all
those new remixes of classic songs.

...and that's it! I will be making new predictions for 2018 when I
celebrate my website's 18th (!) anniversary later this month.